


A tempest everlasting;

by perfectlight



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, i don't even know what this is, vague mentions of others on the Serenity, very vague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlight/pseuds/perfectlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are shadows around corners that belong to no one but memory, yet you run from them anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A tempest everlasting;

**Author's Note:**

> In scurrying to come up with a fic idea for River Song Appreciation Day, my brain seems to have flipped Rivers and spouted something about River Tam instead. An hour and nine minutes too late for River Song's day, I had this. 
> 
> The title is from "The Song of the First Chorus," which appears at the end of Act I of _Hymen's Triumph_ , which is not about what you think it's about and is instead a play that was written for the wedding of the Lord Roxborough and was first published in 1615. 
> 
> _Love is a torment of the mind,  
>  A tempest everlasting;  
> And Jove hath made it of a kind,  
> Not well, nor full nor fasting. _

 

You were taught so much, and it isn’t that you have forgotten, but that everything and nothing crowds and choruses in your mind, shouting and scratching for attention, and you are lost in the crowds of the thoughts they put into you. You remember how to fight but don’t know how to stop. You remember differential calculus, but not the color of the raggedy duvet you had as a little girl. You remember the slopes and curves and angles of dance, but not the feel of music brushing over your skin. You remember the pitch of music, but not the taste.

 

They tie you down and pull you apart and twist and turn as though Descartes from Earth-that-was had been right and animals were no more than machines of flesh, as though the twist of a gear or turn of a cog will change you from a girl to weapon, from a river to a storm. They aren’t there anymore, but they’re coming, or trying to, or wanting to, and sometimes you can hear them in your head, whispering through the gray matter. There are shadows around corners that belong to no one but memory, yet you run from them anyway, because memory can chain you and it can change you, too, but down instead of up, so that you strike instead of fly. And you know that if you fall, the ship still remembering the battle so long ago will fall with you, all the way through the black. So you can only run.

 

...

 

Simon is happy when you enter the white room with the needles and the medicine he doesn’t know can make your brain twist and dance, it scares you but fear, as you know, as you were taught, is only a psychological reaction, a defense mechanism against perceived threats, memories of threats. You are not sure which it is, but Simon’s smiles sound like starlight, and sometimes it is enough to blind you to everything you remember. But other times you cannot tell if what is pushing needles through your skin is Simon, who is safe, who is loyal and yours, or if it is the two by two who put blue in all your veins and filled your hands with shadows that play games inside your head. Then the fear becomes a fight, and the starlight turns to candle wax, and then the captain gets angry, so you tell him facts because truths make your heart steady and he only wants to understand. And you are not always sure if the blood you have belongs to you or if you have taken it, or if it has been put into you, drop by alien drop, so you tell him about vacuums, and think of flesh and candle wax in the vacuum of the black, drifting through streamers of starlight.

 

...

 

You are not sure if the blood you see is real, but you cannot seem to remove it from beneath your skin, from beneath your fingernails, from behind your eyes. Sometimes when you taste it on your tongue you cannot comprehend (though you can understand) why the others slipping through stars around you can’t seem to see it too, though it drips from the walls and puddles on the floor, twining up your ankles and carving rivulets into your flesh. Sometimes you are sure the knife man can see it, or if not, he thinks of it, and likes it too much to make you feel he is kindred. But when you try to show him the red under his skin and how it matches the red all around, everyone on this ship gets angry, and the shadows hiss.

 

The knife man tries to hurt you and Simon later, but quietly, the worst kind of hurt (the kind that always slid through your sockets and crept in circles around your brain before smothering it softly, pretending not to be there, almost making you believe it), and you are not sure if you knew already or were glad to know later. You cannot remember how _before_ and _after_ are supposed to be different anymore, either. If you can remember the second before the first, than which one even began at all?

 

Simon tells (will tell, has told) you it is time to wake up. Sometimes you understand, and sometimes you are confused. You were already awake, but you were sleeping and dreaming of the after when you remembered the before, when you were awake, before you were sleeping, and you cannot quite tell what it is you’re doing now, where you are, what it is in front of you, a gun or a stick but it doesn’t matter unless it gets too crowded and the voices of the others push upon your skin until your bones ache and you have to run away again. 

 

...

 

_I can win this_ , you say to yourself, as everything winds from a tangle into a web around you, mechanic and captain and lady and preacher-man, knife-man and pilot and first mate and Simon. All stitched together, and it reassures you, because a nine-piece rope cannot be so easily pulled apart by hands of blue.

 

...

 

She is you and you are she but you can’t tell who is River anymore. You are not always sure what they wanted, but it wasn’t who you used to be, who is all that Simon wants. Who you are now, you aren’t asleep enough to remember, and what she sees is never quite what she dreams, and sometimes there is too much blue and you want to cut it from your veins, but instead, you only breathe.

 

Sometimes breathing is all you can remember to know.


End file.
